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hastily. The most impartial inquirer will now and then BOOK I reach a conclusion by overleaping part of the evidence.

The sweeping passage which I have quoted, like other passages in Mr. RILEY'S preface to Liber Custumarum, previously noticed, leaves altogether out of view three or four whole classes of testimony-chains not linkshaving a vital bearing on the issue. For example

Chap. II.
LIFE AND
CHARACTER
OF SIR
ROBERT
COTTON.

Sir T. Wilson to King

James I,

Domestic

Corresp.,

vol. xcvi,

(R. H.)

I. It disregards the fact that certain bundles of State letters and papers were given by the King's order to Sir Robert COTTON, during the reign of JAMES THE FIRST. These, indeed, were commanded to be subscriptions and 41, seqq. signatures of Princes and great men, attached to letters otherwise unimportant.' But who is to tell us what was the estimate of 'importance' in papers of State formed, two centuries and a half ago, by JAMES, who gave the order, or by Sir Thomas WILSON, who received it?

II. It disregards the fact that long before, as well as long after, that known order of 1618, Sir Robert's possession of papers once the property of the Government was so published and so recognized as to imply, by fair induction, that the possession must have been—as far as he was concerned a lawful one. In his own writings, he iterates and reiterates reference to national documents then in his own collection. His references are specific and minute. Secretaries of State write to him, asking leave to inspect original Treaties (sometimes in order to lay them before the King in person) and promising to return them promptly. Law Officers of the Crown desire him kindly to afford them opportunities for collating public instruments, preserved at Cotton House, with public instruments still in the repositories of the Crown.

III. It leaves out of sight the fact that in the correspondence of Sir Edward COKE with Sir Robert COTTON

Domestic above, 1621, passim; also

Corresp., as

March; and

Council Books (C. O.).

Book I,
Chap. II.

LIFE AND
CHARACTER
OF SIR
ROBERT
COTTON.

there is a passage which also implies though it does not expressly assert that Sir Robert had received from King JAMES a permission to select records, of some kind or other, from the Tower of London, anterior to the qualified permission, above mentioned, given in 1618, to select Sir R. Cotton; autographs' from the Paper Office;

Sir E. Coke to

MS. Cott.

Julius, ciii (Undated; probably

Privy Council,

1616; 1629;

1680; passim (C. O.)

IV. It disregards that strong implication of a lawful possession-so far as Sir Robert COTTON, individually, is 1612). (B.M.) concerned-which necessarily arises out of the fact that at Registers of two several periods the Cottonian Library was under the sole control and custody of Crown officials; that it remained under such control for an aggregate period of more than two years; that COTTON's bitter enemies were then at the head of affairs; that in 1630 a Royal Commission was actually issued to search what Records or 'other Papers of State in the custody of Sir Robert COTTON properly belong to His Majesty, and thereof to certify;' and that the existing Cottonian MSS., together with those burned in 1732, were, one year after the issue of that Commission, restored by the Crown to Sir Robert COTTON's heirs ;

Signs
Manual,
Charles I,

vol. xii, § 15
(R. H.).

e.g. MS. Harl., 7002,

ff. 120, 122, &c., MS.

Cott. Julius

ciii, passim (B. M.).

V. It overlooks the circumstance, vital to the issue now raised, that amongst the MSS. which most indubitably were once Crown property many can still be minutely traced from possessor to possessor, prior to their reception into the Cottonian Library;

And VI. It disregards the fact, hardly less important, that a patriotic statesman conversant both with the arcana of government at large, and with the special arcana of the State Paper Office and Secretary's offices, under King JAMES the First and King CHARLES the First, might have cogent reasons for believing that some important classes of State Papers would be likely to remain much more truly

Chap. II.

and enduringly the property of the English nation if stored Book 1, up at Cotton House-even had no ‘British Museum' ever LIFE AND been created-than if stored up at Whitehall.

Inferences and implications such as these are far from amounting to conclusive proof. But most readers, I think, will assent to the assertion that, cumulatively, they amount to a very strong presumption indeed that the stigma which has been impressed on Sir Robert COTTON's memory is both precipitate and unjust. Precipitate it plainly is, for a confident verdict has virtually been pronouncedupon a grave issue, before hearing any evidence for the accused. Unjust I, for one, cannot but think it, inasmuch as circumstances which at most are but grounds of mere suspicion of the greater offence charged, have been so huddled up with proofs of a minor and (comparatively) venial offence, that readers giving but ordinary attention to the allegations and their respective evidence are almost certain to be misled.

For, undoubtedly, Sir Robert COTTON stands convicted of dealing, more than once, with manuscripts which he had borrowed very much as though they had been manuscripts which he possessed. Mr. RILEY's testimony is, on this point, conclusive. An independent witness, Dr. Sedgwick SAUNDERS, the able Chairman of the Library Committee of the Corporation of London, tells me that both the returned MS. of Liber Custumarum, and also that of Liber Legum Antiquorum, bear as unmistakable marks of a claim to ownership on Sir Robert's part, as those of which the return was refused.

To such proofs as these I can myself add a new instance. Archbishop LAUD had procured, from the Principal and Fellows of St. John's, the loan to Sir Robert COTTON of a

CHARACTER
OF SIR
ROBERT
COTTON.

Book I,
Chap. II.
LIFE AND
CHARACTER
OF SIR
ROBERT
COTTON.

Archbp.

Laud to Sir

R. Cotton,
MS. Cott.

Julius C., iii,
f. 232.

Bolton to
Camden;
MS. Harl.,

7002, f. 396.

certain ancient Beda MS. of great value.

Many years passed, and the MS. had not returned to St. John's. The Fellows cast severe blame on their eminent benefactor. LAUD had to petition his friend COTTON for the return of Beda, in terms almost pathetic; and he was so doubtful whether pathos would suffice that he added bribe to entreaty. If, he said, 'anything of worth in like kind come to my hands, I will freely give it you in recompense.'

The reader has seen the abounding proofs of that generous furtherance of every kind of literary effort which COTTON gave, throughout life, with an ungrudging heart and an open hand. Sir ROBERT's openness made his library— to use the words of an eminent contemporary-the 'Common treasury' of English antiquities. The reader now sees also the drawback. It remains for him to strike a true balance; and to strike it with justice, but also with charity.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHIEF COLLECTOR AND THE AUGMENTORS
OF THE OLD ROYAL AND PUBLIC LIBRARY
AT ST. JAMES'.

'Death never makes such effectual demonstration of his power, as when he singles out the man who occupies the largest place in public estimation;-as when he seizes upon him whose loss is felt, by thousands, with all the tenderness of a family bereavement ;-puts a sudden arrest, . . . before the infirmities of age had withdrawn him from the labours of usefulness; . . . and sends the fearful report of this his achievement through the streets of the city, where it runs, in appalling whispers, among the multitude.'

THOMAS CHALMERS.

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Life of HENRY, Prince of Wales, son of JAMES I, and virtual Founder of the Royal Library.'-Its Augmentors and its Librarians. Acquisition of the Library of the THEYERS.-Incorporation with the Collections of COTTON and of SLOANE.

LIFE OF

HENRY,
PRINCE OF

WALES.

HENRY, Prince of Scotland, and afterwards of Wales, Book I, Chap. III. was born at Stirling Castle on the 19th of February, 1594. King JAMES had married ANNE of Denmark more than four years before the Prince's birth, but a certain grotesqueness which had marked some of the characteristic circumstances of the marriage in Norway (in 1589) was not without its counterpart among the incidents that came to be attendant on the subsequent event at home. One

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